When Betsy Price was mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, she wanted to tackle childhood obesity and the health problems of the city’s 900,000 residents. To do that, she looked for answers in a blueprint for Blue Zones — the five regions of the world known for their longevity and vitality.
In 2014, during her mayoral tenure, she turned to Blue Zones LLC founder Dan Buettner and his team to create a roadmap of how Fort Worth could incorporate more plant-based diets, more movement and more healthy practices everywhere from schools to businesses to faith-based organizations.
Blue Zones emerged in 2004 when Buettner joined forces with National Geographic, the National Institute on Aging, and others to identify areas around the world where people lived measurably better and longer. Interest and popularity have bloomed since then, spawning books, cookbooks, tours and a documentary series on Netflix.
Taking a page from the original five Blue Zones, Price learned about the importance of healthy dietary shifts, increased movement and creating spaces for people to walk, run and play. And it worked.
“This is beef country. This is cattle-raising country. People said ‘You can’t take our beef away,’” said Price, who was Fort Worth’s mayor from 2011 to 2021. “We told them not to cut it out completely, but to cut it back. The whole goal was to help the city make good choices — not to force people. Take your kids to the park. Get outside.”
With the help of the Blue Zones project, Fort Worth saw a 31% decrease in smoking, reducing the smoking rate to 13.5%, as well as a nine-point increase in residents who exercise at least 30 minutes three or more days of the week to 62%.
“If you can change one neighborhood, you’ve made a big change,” Price said. “It’s amazing in five to seven years how much change we actually saw. Nobody thought it was a short-term project.”
Of the original five Blue Zone locales known for their vigorous longevity, only one spot is in the U.S.: Loma Linda, Calif. The other Blue Zones include Ikaria, Greece; Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; and Nicoya, Costa Rica.
“The whole thing is inspired by places where people live a long time. These people didn’t try to live a long life. They’re not better people. But they do live in an environment that encourages movement and health,” Buettner said.
“It’s not a metric of superhumans. It’s a metric of people avoiding disease. America’s doing a crappy job at that,” Buettner said.
In recent years, Buettner and his team have worked with more than 70 cities to help them gain healthier lifestyles — becoming Blue Zones 2.0.
The effort comes as life expectancy in the U.S. is currently stagnating. The U.S. ranked 46th in the world in terms of life expectancy in 2020, according to the American Journal of Public Health.
In 2022, U.S. life expectancy increased somewhat to 77.5 years, up slightly from 76.4 in 2021, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While life expectancy increased a bit, the gains did not fully offset the loss of 2.4 years between 2019 and 2021 due to increased deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC said.
“American life expectancy is not going in the right direction. We don’t see that we’re frogs in hot water and we’re just going to cook,” Buettner said.
Read: Older Americans will spend 12 years living with disability or disease — why are we so unhealthy?
“Pharmaceutical companies, Big Food, Big Beverage and the NRA are all in the politicians’ ear. But we have a longevity crisis and no politicians want to touch it,” Buettner said.
“Do I have hope? Not much,” Buettner said.
Buettner cited dire statistics related to diet-related deaths, auto accidents and guns.
According to the National Institutes of Health, an estimated 300,000 U.S. deaths per year are due to the obesity epidemic – making obesity or overweight conditions the second leading cause of preventable death behind tobacco use. More than 48,800 people died from gun-related injuries in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the CDC.
Still, for future generations, living to 100 may become commonplace. But long years don’t always mean healthy years. Americans will spend a median of 12 years living with a disability or serious disease, according to Age Wave, a think tank and consultancy focused on aging and longevity. Stanford University’s Center on Longevity expects that 100-year lifespans will be the norm for all U.S. newborns by 2050.
Pointing to the success of Fort Worth, Texas, Buettner said: “It was one of the unhealthiest cities in America. Now, it’s in the middle of the pack. They made downtown more walkable, 300 restaurants made healthier choices, they brought the residents’ BMI down 3% — saving healthcare costs and improving quality of life.”
“The next American Blue Zone is a city whose mayor says our priority is healthy, active people. Does each law that comes across – does it favor health?” Buettner said. “Places that favor the pedestrian and the cyclist over the driver. That favor healthy food over junk food. That favor the non-smoker.”
He cited examples of cities such as San Luis Obispo and Pasadena, Calif.; Minneapolis; Jacksonville and Naples, Fla.; and Scottsdale, Ariz. as locales where efforts succeeded to encourage more walkable cities, parks and healthier eating.
“We never fail at making a city healthier,” Buettner said. “We don’t hammer people to do better. We create a living environment for people to thrive. We unconsciously nudge people into eating less and moving more…Some mayors see their jobs out there to make people healthier. It takes looking at a problem and seeing the big picture.”
Blue Zones are fragile places and can disappear, Buettner said, with Costa Rica’s Blue Zone seen as 20 years away from fading away.
“When Blue Zones get Burger Kings and McDonalds and KFC, chips, soda and candy — they’re going to go away,” Buettner said. “We captured them in a moment in time 20 years ago and they’re going away.”
The Blue Zone effort is a local effort, since changing a nation as a whole would be a large lift.
“330 million Americans won’t agree on what’s healthy. We can’t rely on individuals. It has to be unconscious, and part of the fabric of a city,” Buettner said. “The $150 billion anti-aging and diet industry offers quick hacks. None of that is going to work for the long term. True longevity is small changes over the long term.”
“Until we start, America’s going to continue to spiral down. We know how to reverse the spiral. We have treatable cancer. It just takes the will to do it,” Buettner said.
